Thursday, November 3, 2011

Decision Tree for Potential #OpCartel Participants

If the idea of outing one of the world's most dangerous criminal gangs as a part of Anonymous' #OpCartel appeals to you, please ask yourself the following questions:

1. How have you managed your online identity over the past two years? If you don't know for sure that you haven't revealed any clues to your real life identity in all of the thousands of posts that you've probably generated on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, GroupOn, Zynga, Full Disclosure, public IRC chat, etc., than don't participate in OpCartel.

2. If you aren't sure about your posting history but you're young and feeling immortal, please know that if you participate, you're putting the lives of your family and friends at risk as well. Let me re-state that. Before you get involved in #OpCartel, tell your mother, father, sisters, and brothers that there's a chance they could all be killed because you want to play revolutionary.

The Zetas may not be technically savvy enough to run social analytics on your posting history, but there are plenty of mercenary hacker crews in South America, the EU, and Eastern Europe who are; and that's one thing that the Zetas have lots of - cash.

If you know how to navigate in cyberspace without being identified, and if you believe that helping the Mexican people take back their country from the grip of the cartels is potentially worth dying for, then please consider waiting for members of AnonymousMexico to kick things off. Social networks can provide momentum to a revolutionary movement (witness the Arab Spring), but in every case it has to be initiated by the indigenous population. They have the skin in the game. They have to live with the consequences. Support them if you wish, but if they aren't the primary movers, the risk:reward ratio for this AnonOp is heavily skewed toward the risk side.